Bøger af Averil Cameron

A comparative analysis of Byzantine, Sasanian and Muslim armies and their impact on state resources. Contributions discuss the organization and financing of the army in the late Roman state, the transformations and continuities of the late Sasanid state and with authority and armies in the early Muslim state. Thus, the volume brings together perspectives from neighbouring fields, presents military issues in an intercultural manner and assembles important pieces of knowledge in a comprehensive manner. 1. Jean-Michel Carrie, L'Etat a la recherche de nouveaux modes de financement des armees (Rome et Byzance, IVe-VIIIe siecles) 2. Michael Whitby, Recruitment in Roman Armies from Justinian to Heraclius (ca. 565-615) 3. Benjamin Isaac, The Army in the Late Roman East: the Persian Wars and the Defence of the Byzantine Provinces 4. James Howard-Johnston, The Two Great Powers in Late Antiquity: a Comparison 5. Zeev Rubin, The Reforms of Khusro Anushirwān 6. Ella Landau-Tasseron, Features of the Pre-Conquest Muslim Armies in the Time of Muhammad 7. Fred McGraw Donner, Centralized Authority and Military Autonomy in the Early Islamic Conquests 8. Hugh Kennedy, The Financing of the Military in the Early Islamic State 9. John Haldon, Seventh-Century Continuities: the Ajnād and the "Thematic Myth" 10. Ralph-Johannes Lilie, Zum Einflua der arabischen Expansion auf die byzantinische Militarorganisation "Interdisciplinary enterprises such as [this] volume ... are to be applauded for getting us down to earth." (Patricia Crone)

"This volume focuses on the problems researchers face when using (Byzantine) Greek, Syriac and Arabic sources together for the reconstruction of Near Eastern history from 400-c. 800. Contributions to the volume set the stage for a critical re-reading and revisionist interpretations of selected sources in the various cultural and literary traditions. The volume thus brings together neighbouring disciplines in ways that shed new light on this vitally important time in history. 1. MICHAEL WHITBY, Greek Historical Writing after Procopius: Variety and Vitality 2 . AVERIL CAMERON, New Themes and Styles in Greek Literature: Seventh-Eighth Centuries 3. JOHN HALDON, The Works of Anastasius of Sinai: A Key Source for the History of Seventh-Century East Mediterranean Society and Belief 4. G. J. REININK, Ps.-Methodius: A Concept of History in Response to the Rise of Islam 5. HAN J. W. DRIJVERS, The Gospel of the Twelve Apostles: A Syriac Apocalypse from the Early Islamic Period 6. Wadad Al-QĀḌĪ Early Islamic State Letters: The Question of Authenticity 7. Stefan Leder, The Literary Use of the Khabar: A Basic Form of Historical Writing 8. Lawrence I. Conrad, The Conquest of Arwad: A Source-Critical Study in the Historiography of the Early Medieval Near East ""The need for such a project as this has been felt by students ... concerned with the birth of the new faith and the evolution of Islamic society."" (C. Edmund Bosworth)"

This collection (Cameron's third in the Variorum series) discusses the changing approach among historians of the later Roman empire from the 1960s to the present and the articles reproduced have been chosen to reflect both these wider changes in treatments of the subject as well as Cameron's own development as a historian over many decades.

A comprehensive study which introduces the reader to the vigour and variety of the fourth century AD. After being beset by invasion, civil war and internal difficulties for a century, the Roman Empire that Diocletian inherited in AD 284 desperately needed the organizational drive he brought to the task of putting its administration and defences on a newly secure footing. His successor, Constantine, sustained this consolidation of imperial strength by adopting a vibrant new religion, Christianity. The fourth century AD was a decisive period; its many new challenges and wide cultural diversity are reflected in the pages of its chief historian, Ammianus Marcellinus, and represented by figures as different as Julian the Apostate and St Augustine. Not only providing a vivid narrative of events, this book also draws on archaeological and artistic evidence to illuminate such central issues as economy, social structure, defence, religion and culture. 'The Later Roman Empire' is indispensable to students, and a compelling guide for anyone interested in the cultural development of late antiquity, or in the structure, evolution and fate of empires more generally.

Byzantium occupies an uncertain place in European history. Though often misconstrued as a vanished successor to the classical world, Byzantium belongs in the mainstream history of Europe and the Mediterranean; its impact is still felt throughout the Balkans, Eastern Europe and the Middle East.

In this new evaluation of Procopius, Professor Cameron emphasises the essential unity of the three works and, startin with the 'minor' ones, deomstrates their intimate connection with the Wars.

Why the marginalized story of Byzantium has much to teach us about Western historyFor many of us, Byzantium remains "e;byzantine"e;-obscure, marginal, difficult. Despite the efforts of some recent historians, prejudices still deform popular and scholarly understanding of the Byzantine civilization, often reducing it to a poor relation of Rome and the rest of the classical world. In this book, renowned historian Averil Cameron presents an original and personal view of the challenges and questions facing historians of Byzantium today.The book explores five major themes, all subjects of controversy. "e;Absence"e; asks why Byzantium is routinely passed over, ignored, or relegated to a sphere of its own. "e;Empire"e; reinserts Byzantium into modern debates about empire, and discusses the nature of its system and its remarkable longevity. "e;Hellenism"e; confronts the question of the "e;Greekness"e; of Byzantium, and of the place of Byzantium in modern Greek consciousness. "e;The Realms of Gold"e; asks what lessons can be drawn from Byzantine visual art, and "e;The Very Model of Orthodoxy"e; challenges existing views of Byzantine Christianity.Throughout, the book addresses misconceptions about Byzantium, suggests why it is so important to integrate the civilization into wider histories, and lays out why Byzantium should be central to ongoing debates about the relationships between West and East, Christianity and Islam, Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, and the ancient and medieval periods. The result is a forthright and compelling call to reconsider the place of Byzantium in Western history and imagination.

Averil Cameron refutes an argument by some scholars that Christians did not dialogue after a wall of silence came down in the fifth century AD. Cameron shows that in late antiquity and throughout Byzantium Christians debated and wrote philosophical, literary, and theological dialogues, and she makes a case for their centrality in Greek literature.

Asking how Christianity succeeded in becoming the dominant ideology in the unpromising circumstances of the Roman Empire, the author turns to the development of Christian discourse over the first to sixth centuries AD, investigating its essential characteristics, its effects on existing forms of communication, and its eventual preeminence.